– Shaina Ganapathy, Head Of Community Outreach Initiatives, Embassy Group

India’s government schools play a vital role in providing access to education for millions of children across the country. More than 121 million students were enrolled in these schools in 2024–25, accounting for nearly half of the country’s total student enrolment. Given this scale, the conversation around education is naturally evolving from ensuring access to improving the quality of learning and the outcomes it delivers.

The challenges involved in strengthening a system of this size extend beyond the capacity of any single organisation. Meaningful and sustained social change is more effectively achieved when organisations with shared goals combine their resources and expertise to create greater impact. In education, this means bringing together the strengths of governments, corporates and implementation partners in ways that complement existing efforts and advance shared priorities.

This collaborative approach is particularly relevant when empowering those at the heart of education: teachers. While infrastructure, technology and learning resources are crucial enablers, teachers ultimately shape the classroom experience. With more than five million teachers working in India’s government schools, supporting their professional development and capacity-building is an area where sustained partnerships can create a significant impact at scale.

Strengthening teacher capacity

The quality of an education system is closely linked to the capacity of its teachers. Equipping educators with relevant skills, tools, training and ongoing professional support can strengthen classroom practices and improve their ability to respond to students’ changing needs.

This is an area where corporate participation can complement the efforts of government education departments. Corporates can contribute specialised expertise, technology, resources and innovative approaches, while the government provides the institutional framework and a clear understanding of the needs of schools and communities. Implementation partners, in turn, can translate these combined efforts into effective programmes on the ground.

When these capabilities are aligned, interventions can move beyond isolated programmes towards models that are more responsive to local needs and have greater potential for long-term sustainability and replication.

Creating the conditions for collaboration

The effectiveness of public-private partnerships depends not only on stakeholders’ willingness to collaborate but also on the frameworks that enable such cooperation. As more organisations seek to contribute to education through corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is an opportunity to create greater alignment between corporate initiatives and government priorities.

Such coordination can help direct resources towards areas of genuine need, reduce duplication and enable stakeholders to build on one another’s work. It also gives the government a clearer view of the collective support available across districts, while helping corporates identify where their capabilities can contribute most effectively.

Karnataka provides an encouraging example of how such a framework can evolve. Over the years, Embassy Group has worked closely with the Government of Karnataka and other partners on initiatives aimed at strengthening government schools. Through this engagement, we recognised an opportunity to create a common platform through which the government could articulate its priorities and corporate partners could align their CSR efforts accordingly.

This led to the development of Namma Shaale Namma Koduge, which has evolved into a statewide platform facilitating corporate participation in school education. The initiative is the result of several years of consultation and collaboration between government departments, CSR teams and other relevant stakeholders.

Today, Karnataka has established clear CSR partnership guidelines and a single-window mechanism that enables corporate partners to engage more effectively with government institutions. Corporate CSR cells in the offices of district commissioners further support the coordination and monitoring of CSR initiatives, helping reduce duplication and direct resources towards identified priority areas.

The significance of this approach extends beyond simplifying corporate participation. It provides a structured environment in which the government can articulate its priorities, while corporates and implementation partners contribute their respective capabilities to addressing them. In doing so, it creates greater coherence between individual initiatives and the broader objectives of the education system.

From individual efforts to collective impact

Karnataka’s experience highlights a significant opportunity for CSR in education. As corporate participation matures, its value will increasingly depend on how effectively organisations align their resources with the priorities of the education system.

This calls for a longer-term and more considered approach to partnerships. Successful and meaningful interventions are unlikely to operate in isolation. Instead, they must strengthen existing initiatives, respond to needs identified on the ground and help shape solutions beyond the immediate project.

For teachers, this means moving towards sustained support rather than one-off training. For schools, it means reinforcing the wider ecosystem in which learning takes place. For corporates, it means contributing their expertise and capabilities while remaining willing to learn from the government, educators and implementation partners.

The opportunity before us, therefore, is to expand and strengthen the contribution of CSR to education. When different stakeholders work towards a common purpose, individual efforts can reinforce one another, successful approaches can be scaled up and the benefits of collaboration can extend well beyond a single school or programme.

India’s government schools already form the backbone of the country’s education system. Their next phase of development will depend on how effectively we collectively support the people, institutions and partnerships that sustain them. Public-private collaboration has an important role to play in that journey.

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